It should be noted that inflation doesn't have all the same effects in a small, closed economy like wow that it does in the real world.

I'll be honest, I wish blizzard would take dailies out of the system again. A because they are boring. But B because the inflation they cause really is that high. I have seriously considered that if I ever went for a degree in economics to use WoW as a basis for the paper. The economy in game is actually very interesting. 

Then again, I wish blizzard would come out and tell people "if we give you what you want as you bitch for more dailies, we are gonna cause horrible inflation so your actually having to spend even more than before and possibly not even breaking even."

There is no Emotion; There is Peace.
There is no Ignorance; There is Knowledge.
There is no Passion; There is Serenity.
There is no Death; There is The Force.
~Jedi Code

Dailies, bots and buying gold increase inflation, IMO.  I think the dailies have contributed more, though, simply because I think more people do them vs use bots or buy gold (zero data to back that up, but it seems logical). 

Over the last year or so, I've been using the AH to make lots of $ and I'm amazed at how much things go for now (and sell!).  I put stuff on the AH for literally 2.5x what I did before Sunwell came out.  And it sells.  We're talking 25g per item (50s level mats none the less) when I used to sell em for 10.

Yes, Botting is bad and you will be banned...

I am more interested in the economical side.

I think Botting pre-bc was a greater factor than it is now. When ever I look at something on the AH I consider how many dailies it would take and decided if I am willing to wait or farm or buyout...

Dailies which are safe versus Botting account banned.

I do not disbute that Botting does contribute to Inflation, but doess the surplus materials produce counteract the money gained through vendering? I do not think so... so Botting does contribute to Inflation.

I was mainly considering this one sentence; "botting is precisely the reason (well, one of them) why things are so expensive in-game."

From what I have seen on the server I imagine Supply and Demand + Daily (pots of gold) quests have contributed far greater recently than botting.

People are willing to spend more and do dailies than farm the mats they need. Less people farming + more legal money available... if things do not sell high they get relisted lower.

People like me are probably more of a factor than professional botters... I have a ton of stuff sitting in my banks for when the AH is out of them.

My common AH evils:

- When no items are listed I jack up the price rediculously. If I am undercut it is usually only by 10%. By then the price is set really high so what ever I havn't sold I can relist at the current high price.

- Listed things in singles instead of stacks. Single Price = Gold Per Stack/# in stack * 2. People usualy do not shift through 3 pages of singles and compare the prices to the stacks... at least the people who bought my stuff. 3g per 1 Dreaming Glory was entertaining.

- Undercutting buy out is silly. Match the losest price then make the bid for a few copper less. Your auction will be first sorted by bid or cost.

- Green and Blue gear are generally worth more disenchanted. Free to list so price can be set as high as you want with in reason... why undercut if there is no penalty to relist. Weapons should be vendered.

Yes, it is a slow day! lol

... not having a good grammer day.

While I agree with most of that Lepp, consider:

A skinning/LW'ing toon uses a bot to farm up mass amounts of leather to level leatherworking.  After an evening he has enough mats to create a number of items.  Most of these items are not items that a player will use, and the LW'er cannot disenchant them, so he vendors them.

Yes, his bot farmed up raw mats and not currency (a-la dailies).  However, the raw mats did not exist prior to his botting, and by creating an item and vendoring it, he has created money that did not exist before, thus adding money to the marketplace and - gasp - inflation ensues.

The only crafting professions that do not really generate inflation are enchanting and jewelcrafting, as the items/enchants they generate are used to enhance other items and are consumed in the process.  I suspect inscription will be similar in WotLK.

Regardless of the reasons, botting is silly and extremely dangerous for your account.

See, whenever Warion types, I translate it in my head. I used to try and figure out what he said - but then my brain would fizzle. So instead, I decided that when he types, he's really just saying "Puppies"

And it made my life so much easier.

-Jos

sorry for my poor grahmar skill i no i suck at the english laguge<<< thats wrong lol>

who said i was quit or that i didnt like wow any more i enjoy wow very veyr much i little to much u can say =]. and im not goin to bumb quit retired go "emo" because i enjoy the game the way the game work the interraction win game and out (the site) and raidng is was of the best things to do in wow becoming better and seeniong the end of the game. u dont have to worry about me quit wow any time soon. and i wanted to try out boting for one reson to earn some gold whaiel say im in my pool or some where else and i dont have to sit here and  farm and yes i no famring gold it really easy now espiclly with the new dailys but idk farming is dull to me but yet has to be done. and iv alrdy made the desion not to bot before i made the post after hear the one word "ban" i would die if i lost warion lol to much hard work.

i should start my own boting  called"hey yo nepwhn wanna see something cool". lol

Also, botting is precisely the reason (well, one of them) why things are so expensive in-game.

People who bot generate enormous amounts of raw materials and in-game items.  By generating new items (e.g. cloth, fish, minerals, ore, herbs, etc), you generate items which will eventually make their way back to a vendor - by being sold and what not.  In short, every item you farm up introduces currency into the market.

By botting, you generate ENORMOUS amounts of these items, which in turn becomes enormous amounts of currency.  You inflate the market, even if only by accident.  You introduce more money into the market, thus reducing the value of existing currency and eventually inflating the prices of goods between players.

This is the same reason why, in FFXI (here he goes again), rare items went from being worth 4-6 million "gil" (the in-game currency) to over 20-30 million gil in UNDER ONE YEAR.  Imagine if all those lovely crafting mats, like Primal Fires, went from being 30 gold each to 120-150 gold each.  Gotta love inflation.

In short - don't cause inflation.  Don't bot. 

Wow has a background application called Warden that literally ... well, here's what it does:

Warden is a background program that
runs concurrently with World of Warcraft and Starcraft. It is an
anti-cheat tool used by Blizzard to detect cheat programs and ban
cheating players. Privacy advocates have questioned Warden's secrecy,
claiming it is possible for it to view personal information and relay
it back to Blizzard, at least in theory. Some details of Warden were
released in court filings regarding Blizzard vs. MDY, which I will
attempt to summarize. Most information is from an affidavit of Greg
Ashe, Blizzard's manager of technical research.

"Warden," as it
is known, is actually two components: scan.dll and the "resident
component" which to Blizzard is the "real" Warden. Scan.dll is a
dynamic link file library that scans a player's RAM for cheating
programs and changes to the WoW game files before players log into WoW.
It prevents players from logging in if such programs or changes are
detected. From what I gather, this does not actually report back to
Blizzard. The resident component (the actual Warden)is what operates in
the background once players are logged in. If it detects and cheating
programs, hacks, etc., it will disconnect users - and ban them
automatically without human interaction. It can integrate modules on
the fly to detect specific cheats without reloading the client.

I'm rather relieved to know that Blizzard doesn't retrieve the contents of your RAM before you agree to the EULA/ToU.

Basically, it reads what's actively running on your computer and compares it to "known" cheat software (e.g. Glider).  If it recognizes a known cheat program, it will instantly ban your account.  In short, WoW knows if you're so much as looking at porn while raiding. 

it was just i thought of gold farming but than i saw the ban thing and id rather not risk it and lose the account. now i did use it before i posted this forum and do wow find who used glider by seeing it being in use or form there wow file type stuff cause im pretty much been wiping my computer of anything that had to do with the glider now lol

Yes.

A guy I know from college had an account banned for botting.